The present invention relates, in general, to seating furniture and in particular to a gliding chair system for use in commercial and residential applications.
Over the years various types of gliding and mobile chair assemblies have been developed, primarily for use in an office, as well as at home. The majority of the conventional seating apparatus utilize caster assemblies, such as ball, shepherd, single and double-wheel attachments to the legs of the chair to enable the user of such chair to glide it to a desired position while the user is seated in the chair or out of the chair. While the various types of gliding devices, such as the previously mentioned casters, impart mobility to the chair and its user on hard and smooth surfaces, such as wood, linoleum, tile, etc. a user often has a much more difficult time gliding the chair to a desired position when the chair rests on nonsmooth surfaces, such as padded or moderately piled carpeting.
In a substantial number of offices and homes today, carpeting is no longer looked upon as a luxury but rather as a necessity in terms of decoration and comfort. Once a conventional gliding chair is placed upon carpeting, it is often found that its ability to be glided about in a facilitated manner is extremely decreased. Depending on the pile and type of carpeting, as well as the thickness of the padding underneath, the mobility of such an otherwise easily mobile chair to be glided can be lost. Additionally, the utilization of a conventional three or four-wheeled caster chair often has a tendency to deface the carpeting through the continuous application of substantial weight, causing the gliding devices to embed into the nap of the carpet. Further, once a gliding device is embedded into the carpet, attempts at moving the chair with substantial weight in it, results in the placement of undue sheer forces on the casters or wheel assemblies, often resulting in damage to these gliding devices, thus requiring additional expense for their repair or replacement.
The most universal, conventional solution to the problems arising under the placement of an otherwise mobile chair on carpeting has been through the use of chair mats, often fabricated of plastic and vinyl. While the use of chair mats reduces the amount of sheer force exerted on a chair's caster assemblies, a series of problems are often encountered which tend to make them undesirable. Among these problems is the additional cost required for supplying these articles to enable mobility of the chair, the relatively frequent cracking and fracturing of the mats, and the substantially unattractive effect these mats impart to an otherwise attractively carpeted area. Even though these mats are available in a variety of colors, it is extremely difficult to coordinate mat colors, designs, etc. with the overall decorating scheme in the home or office.
Even more importantly, however, several serious structural problems arise when one attempts to utilize the conventional mobile or gliding chair assembly on such a mat. The first of these problems is the fact that the size of the mat is often limited, thereby enabling mobility of the gliding chair to only a particular, somewhat constrained, rolling region. Secondly, the mats themselves are constructed of a substantially thick material so as to reduce cracking, splitting and deformation by the chair's rolling devices. In most conventional mats, for example, the thickness often approaches 3/16ths of an inch. A problem arises when a rolling or gliding caster device goes beyond the limits of the region protected or defined by the mat, the user must apply sufficient body momentum to the chair to roll that particular caster back onto the mat. Where the casters or rolling devices utilized are of such a small diameter and dimension, the user often finds himself having to get out of the chair and lifting the chair itself and the legs and gliding device that slipped off the mat back onto the mat. Where the gliding devices are of such a dimension so as to enable rolling back onto the mat once it has rolled off, it is necessary for the user to exert a substantial amount of force to recover the chair's original placement with all of its gliding devices on the mat. While overly inconvenient to the user, the re-positioning of the chair, its legs, and its associated rolling devices, often places extreme stress on the caster devices, thereby frustrating the overall purpose of the mat and causing even more damage to the casters than would have been encountered had there been no mat utilized in the first place. In accordance with this problem, it becomes apparent that replacement and repair of the caster assemblies themselves or the upwardly extending member from the casters which attach them to the legs of the chair, can be encountered. To emphasize the effects of the mat edge to the chair's casters it should be noted that many office furniture manufacturers actually test the rigidity and dependability of the casters they use through tests wherein casters are repeatedly glided over the edge of a mat under a loaded force.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide an improved gliding chair system which automatically distributes the weight of the user and the chair as desired through a number of supporting, gliding devices and which does so automatically through the basic concepts of fulcrum and lever.
It is additionally an object of the present invention to provide a mobile chair for a user which is unobtrusive to the eye and which eliminates the need for the supply and usage of smooth hard mat surfaces.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide a chair assembly which can be glided to a desired position outside the normal range of a conventional mat, which decreases the damage to carpeting while still imparting relatively easy gliding characteristics to the chair for the user.
Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide a mobile chair which can be adjusted from a structural configuration for use on carpets to the more conventional gliding structure utilized on conventional chairs for use on hard, smooth surfaces, one which is reasonably inexpensive to fabricate and one which uses gliding devices which are less costly to manufacture while at the same time providing an effective alternative to the more costly caster devices utilized on more conventional chairs.
These and other objects of the invention will become apparent in light of the following disclosure.